


The Frond Sea

by black_lodge



Series: the wonder that's keeping the stars apart [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Science Fiction, Swearing, Tentacles, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 00:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4939426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_lodge/pseuds/black_lodge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>POST "TIME-HEIST": Clara and the Doctor take a dip in a sea that is actually a living organism, discover a quirk of the TARDIS' translation matrix, and get a little closer than they were before....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Frond Sea

Clara likes a man who moves fast, but the Doctor moves almost too fast for her sometimes. When she starts to fall behind, he grabs her by the wrist -– long, impossibly long fingers meeting easily –- and she curses her six-inch heels.

“We aren’t even running _from_ something this time!” she pants after nearly bowling him over when he stops suddenly at the edge of the cliff. Lavender-colored grass, long and springy, stirs in the breeze around their feet. “I fail to see why it’s necessary to take every trip at literally breakneck speed.”

“Question,” says the Doctor, and her skin prickles as she braces herself. “Does the indignation in your voice indicate you blame me for your failure to understand my plans? Hypothesis: I have no control over ignorance.”

“Hypothesis,” Clara suggests: “you’re a git.” And as he’s leaning over the precipice she gives him a bump. He flails, twists, grabs for her, and then she’s in his arms and they’re plummeting down, down, shouting incomprehensibly at one another until they hit the undulating, gelatinous, candy-floss mass of the Frond Sea.

They’re separated, borne aloft on curious probing tendrils packed together so tightly they form a violet froth, a sentient organism bigger than Earth’s coral reef. As Clara half-sinks, she can feel the tendrils wriggling against her skin, soft and cool and just a bit oily, and suddenly whatever exasperation was left to linger in her system after that heart-stopping drop evaporates.

“Clumpin’ slack-labrador vuvuzelas, don’t you _ever_   -– ”

The Doctor is upbraiding her, his Scottish brogue thickening in his agitation, and Clara’s begun to suspect that the TARDIS’ translation matrix is censoring his stronger language because the half-swears that come out of his mouth are nonsensical and plainly silly, and she starts to laugh.

“It’s nothin’ to laugh about, Clara, there was no way of knowin’ the fronds wouldn’t just ringin’ dump us through, like itty-bitty rocks in a giant steamin’ bucket of turtle soup! And then we’d be in a right ham-hock of a state, wouldn’t we, plummetin’ to the center of the frothin’ planet –- What in the ever-lovin’ state of France are you laughin’ at?”

She can’t answer –- she’s helpless with laughter.

“It’s not funny!” he growls.

“Bollocks!” she tries to say, but it comes out “Badgers!”

It’s too much. The shock of the fall wrung her adrenal glands dry and her body is vibrating with uncontrollable energy that needs to get out, out, out, and all she can do is laugh, and occasionally spit out an obscenity just to see how the TARDIS renders it. The Doctor is at a loss, incapable of derailing her hysterics, and it’s clear they simply have to let it run its course. He fights half-heartedly against the clingy grip of the fronds as Clara laughs herself silly.

Finally, buzzing with contentment, her brain thoroughly basted in a haze of endorphins, she quiets, hiccuping a bit.

“Finished, then?” says the Doctor, struggling in the mass.

All Clara can do is purr, spread-eagled on her back in the fronds.

“Didn’t catch that, sorry,” says the Doctor dryly, so she does it again.

His eyes widen as the fronds begin to tremble, flicker, resonate to the frequency of her voice. The sour look falls from the his face as the fronds bear them up and up, and he looks at her with a particularly penetrating version of his ‘attack eyebrows.’ “Do that again,” he commands.

“Do what?” says Clara, opening one eye.

“That – that – that – that thing you’re doing, with your mouth. Do it again!”

“Mmmmm, Doctor, I -- _Oh_!”  The undulating, feathery motion of the fronds tickles. “Oh, now that is really, really something.”

“Exactly!” the Doctor exclaims. “The fronds, Clara!” He struggles to swim over to her but it’s not that kind of a sea and the fronds seem delighted to weave about him and hold him in place. “Tim-Tams it, you iridescent grassin’, wormy – ”

“Just relax, you impossible man, and I’ll come to you,” Clara says, unable to suppress her laughter, and as it bubbles up, throaty and a bit rough from all the laughing, the fronds are humming gently against her bare skin. She leans toward him and hundreds of fronds, no wider around than her little finger, ripple around her, passing her over to the Doctor, who is up to his armpits in them as if he’s treading water and doing it badly.

“Incredible,” he breathes, his intense eyes so wide he looks mad as he inspects the tendrils that are gamely carrying Clara about. “It seems they’re responding to you, Clara, or more specifically to the lower registers of your voice.”

“That does seem rather odd,” says Clara, but he’s right; whenever she hums, or murmurs, the fronds tremble around her. “Hmmm," she tries, experimentally. "Oh, yes, _there_ it is." She smirks at him and drops her voice even lower: "Mmmmmmm.”

The Doctor goes a bit pink. Clara doesn't try to disguise her stare -- he's usually white as ice and at this moment there's nothing she likes better than the touch of color dashed across his face.

"Surely you aren't ticklish, Doctor?" Clara says, raising an eyebrow so effortlessly that he would have been proud of her, had he not been currently a bit distracted.

“Well, just slap ‘em if they get a bit fresh,” he says with artificial briskness, and he claps a hand to the back of his neck where one tendril has been innocently working its way under his tightly-buttoned collar.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she says to herself, watching as a cluster of soft jelly-like tentacles cling gently to her probing finger. “What does it mean?”

“It’s all very mysterious, of course, and I’d gladly tell you all I know about it except I think, Clara, there’s a more pressing matter to deal with.”

And now she notices that it looks like he’s badly treading water because, well, he’s sinking.

“Can’t you swim?” she asks.

“Of course I can swim, but this isn’t exactly a dip in the dunkin’ Thames!”

This is a problem she didn’t foresee. She should get used to this feeling, she thinks, and she hits upon a solution.

“I’m going to have to, er, hug you, Doctor.”

His glare is less threatening than longsuffering. “I’ll give you a free pass, but just this once,” he says, and then he lets her wrap her arms around his chest. She buoys him up, her head resting on his waistcoat, and sure enough the fronds bear them both up together.

"That was surprisingly effective," she says, and he just grunts in response.

Around them the Frond Sea undulates. The sound is unlike anything she's ever heard before: nothing like the sea back home, with its dramatic crashing and roaring punctuated by the cry of birds. This sea squelches and slaps and sometimes even seems to whisper a little bit. She thinks it's just her imagination, but then again, she  _is_ on an alien planet. Maybe there are mouths further down. All living organisms need to eat somehow, after all.

“So tell me about the sea,” she murmurs, unsettled by the thought of wet, warm, soft mouths below the surface.

“Yes. Right," says the Doctor, clearing his throat as she rubs her cheek against his soft jumper. "Well, little is known about the Frond Sea, except that it goes very far down – all the way down, in fact. As far down as it’s possible to go. You think the oceans on Earth are frightening? Well, you’d be wise to be afraid; have you seen angler fish? – but my point is that even the deepest ocean trench is like a crack in the pavement compared to the depths of the Frond Sea.”

His lecture on the Frond Sea lasts a good half hour — for once, nothing threatens them or chases them and there’s nobody else that needs saving, and Clara finds an unexpected oasis of calm with her head cushioned on the Doctor’s thin chest, as close as she can get to the alien tomtom rhythm of his hearts, his hypnotic voice rumbling through her body and warming her up from the tips of her toes to the tip of her nose. She wonders how he can focus. Evidently he’s oblivious to — whatever it is that’s humming through her. _Out_ of her. _Around_ her. When he pauses for breath she hums in assent, agreement, curiosity, entreaty, and the sea responds instantly.

The Doctor isn't as responsive, but she realizes gradually that whereas she is progressively unraveling against him, he is growing steadily more tense. His body grows taut, his breaths come quicker as he becomes possessed by the rhythm of his lecture. His hand comes up to her shoulder, his long fingers tapping and curling around her upper arm, punctuating his speech. She feels those fingers begin to thread into her hair, stroking through the ends of it, tugging fitfully at her scalp so that bursts of electric pleasure shiver straight down her spine. When her body shudders in response, the fronds ripple around them like sympathetic strings.

She realizes she wants nothing more than for him to tangle those fingers in her hair, pull her head back, and finally angle his infinitely mobile mouth down across hers.

The Frond Sea bears them aloft until the Doctor begins to complain of sea-sickness, and Clara reluctantly works out how to coax the fronds to take them back to dry ground.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got some notes for a second chapter, but since this stands just as well as a one-shot, I'm labeling it as "complete" for now.


End file.
